22. Silas
Silas
The hum of the Operations room is a low, sickening mockery of life.
Days haven’t blurred together; they’ve fractured into a nightmare of repeating, agonising loops, each one worse than the last. My eyes burn, raw and overworked, the glowing code melting into warped, taunting shadows on the screen
I don’t need databases or bureaucratic permission. I know the filth Dale and Ray come from. They’re not ghosts. They’re parasites– and parasites always leave a trail of rot in their wake.
My laptop is open on the large table that sits in the centre of the Operations room, the casing burning hot against my wrists as I dive deep into the underground forums.
The dark corners of the web where a fucker like Ray finds what he needs, blood sports, illegal fighting circuits, and broken human beings bought and sold like cattle.
My fingers punch the keys, ripping through aliases, ring names, location tags, and every filthy promoter running fights in the Pacific Northwest.
Nothing.
No chatter about a new fighter stepping onto the canvas. No whispers of a fresh, broken soul entering the circuit. They’ve scrubbed him clean, burying him in a grave before he’s even dead.
I pull up financial ledgers, dummy shell companies, and cross-border property holdings tied to Jack’s uncle and father.
I tracked their car across the border into Seattle hours after Jack vanished, catching their plates on traffic cameras before they went dark.
But when Deck and CJ physically swept every known property, every old haunt, every shadow tied to Ray and Dale…
they found empty rooms. Dust on the counters. Silence.
Nothing.
My chest caves in, a violent, suffocating pressure crushing my ribs until I can barely drag enough oxygen into my lungs. I can’t find him. I’m staring at a blank map on my screen, and every ticking second feels like a knife twisting deeper into my gut.
I failed him.
I told him I would burn the world down, but right now, the world is winning, and my dove is trapped somewhere in the dark, bleeding for my mistakes.
I don’t leave this room. I haven’t changed my clothes in days, the scent of stale coffee, sweat, and cheap takeout clinging to my skin like a second layer.
Sleep is a joke. Whenever my eyelids feel heavy, I dump ice-cold water over my face or jam my fingers into my desk until the sharp pain forces me awake. I refuse to rest while he’s caged.
I lean back in my chair, dragging a hand hard down my face.
The gold ring on my pinkie finger, Jack’s mother’s ring, catches the pale glare of the monitor.
It doesn’t warm up. It burns cold against my skin, a sharp, bittter reminder that he’s gone, that I let him walk right out of my life because I didn’t give him enough reason to stay, because I was too blind to see the noose tightening around his neck.
Around me, the room is thick with jagged, suffocating tension.
Eli paces near the window like a caged beast, his jaw locked tight enough to shatter teeth.
CJ sits on the arm of the couch, a plastic pen snapping in his grip with a sharp crack.
Finn and Mack are working the phones in the corner, leaning on every underworld runner and underground contact we have left, pressing for scraps of information that never materialise.
“Still nothing on the dock circuits,” Callan mutters, tossing his phone onto the coffee table with a dull thud. “Our guys checked every warehouse and shipping yard from Tacoma up to Everett. If they’re keeping him somewhere, it’s an airtight vault.”
“They can’t keep him invisible forever,” Finn says, though his voice lacks conviction, echoing hollowly off the concrete walls. “Someone always talks, especially in the betting circuits. We just need a break.”
I stand up from the desk, my joints stiff, my blood buzzing with a frantic, homicidal fury. I don’t want words.
I don’t want hope.
I want blood.
I want to tear Ray’s throat out with my bare hands and watch the life drain from his eyes while he begs for mercy he’ll never get.
* * *
Night falls, dragging us down with it.
The sheer exhaustion finally hits like a physical blow, dragging me toward the spare bunk room upstairs. I collapse onto the narrow mattress, too broken, too hollowed out to fight the dark any longer.
And the second my eyes close, the nightmare takes me.
The room is suffocatingly warm, bathed in the soft, bruised amber glow of bedside lamps.
Jack is right there.
Naked against the tangled sheets, his skin flushed, his cock heavy against his flat abs, pre-cum glistening like silver on his stomach. He looks up at me through heavy-lidded eyes, dark and entirely submissive, parting his lips as I step closer.
He reaches out, his fingers trembling with a desperate, worshipful need, and I take his hand. He kneels on the mattress right in front of me, his eyes locked on mine as his fingers slide to my belt buckle. The sharp click of metal releasing sounds like a gunshot in the quiet room.
My hand threads into his hair, gripping the dark strands as his lips wrap around my cock, warm and slick, taking my length down his throat until the tip of his nose presses flush against my pubic hair. Saliva and pre-cum drip over his chin, tracking down his neck.
“You want me deep, boy?” I growl, my voice a gravelly rasp that vibrates against his skin.
He nods frantically against me, humming a low, obedient sound in the back of his throat, taking every inch of me without a single complaint.
“Hands down, dove.”
He drops them instantly, resting them flat on his thighs. God, he’s perfection. My canvas. My entirely broken, worshipful boy, taking my instruction like breathing.
My hips thrust gently, and I watch him as he takes my cock, sliding me all the way to the back of his throat with an effortless, practiced grace. He hums around me, a low, desperate sound, and I feel the warm vibration ripple straight against my shaft, sending a jolt of fire straight to my balls.
“You want me, baby?” I rasp, my hand gripping the dark strands of his hair.
He pulls his lips off my cock with a wet, echoing pop, looking up at me through heavy-lidded, dark eyes, chest heaving. “Always, Sol.”
“On your knees, back to me,” I order, pulling completely out of his mouth.
He obeys without a single second of hesitation, shifting his weight, arching his spine, and presenting his tight, bare ass to me with a silent, desperate plea for punishment and possession.
I step behind him, dragging my fingernails slowly up his spine. He shivers from head to toe, a soft gasp slipping from his lips. I raise my hand and bring it down sharp against his left cheek.
Crack.
The skin instantly blurs red beneath my palm. Jack whimpers, wriggling back against me like he can’t get close enough.
“Another,” he breathes, his voice wrecked, begging for more of the pain that proves he belongs to me.
I don’t hesitate. I raise my hand again and bring it down harder, the impact echoing in the dark room. “Good boy. So good for you, aren’t you, Jack? Mine. Completely mine.”
I rain blow after blow across his cheeks until they are painted a fierce, throbbing crimson, his cries and moans turning into ragged, beautiful music.
My fingers dip down, slicking his tight, puckered heat with lube, stretching him open, sliding a finger inside, then a second, then a third, until he’s mewling against the sheets, begging for the rest of me, weeping for the fullness he craves.
“Don’t worry, baby,” I growl, pressing the head of my cock against his entrance. “I’m going to breed you. Make you so full of me you won’t remember what air tastes like. I’m going to brand you from the inside out.”
I push through the ring of muscle, burying myself balls-deep in his heat. He screams my name into the mattress, and I grab a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back as I hammer into him without an ounce of mercy, driving him into the mattress over and over.
“Break for me, baby. Tell me you’re mine.”
“Sol… Sol, please—”
“Fucking perfect,” I snarl, my own control fraying to absolute ash as his heat milks me.
I hook an arm around his chest, hauling him up against my body as I slam into him over and over, driving us both toward the edge of a jagged cliff. I bite down hard into the smooth skin of his shoulder, tasting salt and sweat, right as my body fractures.
I come violently, my come hot and heavy inside him, my vision whiting out as I roar his name into the dark.
Jack shudders against me, his own body convulsing in a blinding, hands-free release that spills over his stomach and bedspread.
For a fraction of a second, the world is complete. He is beneath me, marked by my hands, branded by my teeth, entirely mine.
And then he whispers into the dark, his voice fading like smoke into the edges of my consciousness:
Sol, please find me, Sol.
My eyes snap open to the dark, suffocating ceiling of the Palmer bunk room.
My chest heaves, burning with phantom heat. My skin is drenched in a cold, heavy sweat, my body aching with a cruel, agonising emptiness.
I reach out blindly in the dark, my hand clawing frantically across the mattress beside me.
Empty sheets.
No warmth. No breath. No Jack.
The silence of the room drops over me like a slab of concrete, heavier and deadlier than any nightmare. The dream shatters, leaving behind the jagged, bleeding reality of my world.
He was never here.
I bury my face in my hands, my shoulders shaking as a ragged, choked sob violently tears its way out of my throat. The cold, calculated control I’ve forced myself to wear like armour finally snaps.
I curl inward on the narrow mattress, clutching the delicate gold ring on my pinkie finger so hard the metal bites deep into my flesh, drawing blood, as i cry helplessly in the dark for my boy.